Page 2900 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 24 June 2009
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bringing in innovative policies should be first and foremost in our thinking. I am glad that this government does it; it is just a pity that the opposition and the Liberals seem to want to try to pull that plank out from underneath Canberra families.
Motion agreed to.
Land—rent scheme
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (5.20), by leave: I move:
That this Assembly:
(1) condemns the Chief Minister for:
(a) misleading the community about the level of support for the Land Rent Scheme by failing to notify the public prior to the 2008 election that a major mortgage insurer had withdrawn support and claiming that the scheme was supported across the board; and
(b) failing to:
(i) inform the public of the onerous deposit and insurance requirements of the only lender willing to provide finance for the Land Rent Scheme; and
(ii) provide to the Assembly a detailed timeline of the advice received by the Chief Minister’s office and department, cross-referenced with information provided to the public regarding land rent; and
(2) calls on the Chief Minister to inform the Assembly what the full details of the lending requirements of the current lender will be, including deposit, interest rate, and all fees and charges.
We now come to the motion which the Chief Minister and the Labor Party did not want to debate today. And we know why; we know why they did not want to debate it; we know why they tried to adjourn private members’ business today before we actually got to this. It was because Jon Stanhope wanted to make his announcement, claim his victory and then not have to answer any questions about the detail.
We saw it yesterday. He had 20 minutes in which to give us some detail. He refused. He had the opportunity today to give us detail and, in fact, he took it on notice. It actually reminds me a bit of when Mr Corbell, some time ago, did not quite get the headline he wanted on a thing called EpiCentre. I think we had a similar thing from the Chief Minister today. Far from the “Stanhope vindicated” headline that, no doubt, he had been hoping for and expecting, we saw a fairly balanced article, I think, from the Canberra Times this morning in relation to the reality of what has happened. Indeed, there are a number of further questions on the land rent scheme.
But it is worth going through some of the key bits which I am sure Jon Stanhope would not have liked. I know he has already ordered an ad; I know he pre-empted it;
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